You might have heard in the media that there is a software vulnerability, to do with PHP software, that could affect websites, such as ours.

I have just received an email from the u3a websites team confirming that the MBM u3a website is not impacted. We already had protection in place and the PHP patch has been applied as an extra measure.

I have included the contents of the email below, if anyone is interested in more detail...

Dear Gary

As you will have seen in the media, there is a critical security vulnerability affecting PHP.

PHP is a very widely used computer language for web development and is used in all sites that use WordPress. The vulnerability is in the PHP language itself, not in WordPress.

All hosted SiteWorks sites are protected by the Immunify360 web application firewall, which already contains rules that would prevent the PHP vulnerability from being exploited. However, the hosting company that manages the SiteWorks' servers have applied the update to fix the vulnerability.

We are now running PHP 8.3.36, however, the wrong version number is still showing. This is just a display issue and will be corrected by CloudLinux.

The security of u3a websites hosted by SiteWorks is our top priority and no further action is required.

The SiteWorks Team